The Birth of PASMA

The entry of a multinational manufacturer into the relatively small UK tower market (S&C were part of the Boulton & Paul Group who were in turn part of the BET multinational conglomerate a worldwide diverse organisation formed with the financial compensation received by its owners when their massive transport business was nationalised after the war) really stirred the market up. Demand was growing but there was still a lot of resistance to using aluminium towers in the building and construction industry and a lot of opposition from traditional steel scaffold companies. This was a period when there was a lot of legislative change as well. The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 was being drafted and even before it was published was having an impact on the access industry as a whole. Trades people in the building industry had traditionally built their own scaffolds usually without any formal training and the prospect of the HASAWA resulted in an agreement between employers, trade unions and the major scaffold companies (represented by their trade association NASC) that only trained scaffolders should build a scaffold above 5m. Quickly dubbed “The 5 metre rule” the tower manufacturers realised that there would be a massive need for towers to be used to fill the gap in demand for access left by the implementation of the 5m rule but that this could only happen if there was a coordinated message to government, industry, unions and a big education exercise for users. Also, at this time there were starting to be fatal accidents with towers caused by lack of knowledge amongst their users. It is hard to appreciate these days but at this time reported fatalities caused by falls from height were running at over 400 per year.

As a consequence of this legislative pressure and some unfortunate accidents the (now four) manufacturers decided in 1974 to set up a trade association to further these aims. These manufacturers were Access Equipment Ltd, John Rusling Ltd, Martin-Thomas Ltd and Stephens & Carter Ltd. PASMA was set up as, and remains, a not for profit organisation dedicated to promoting the safe use of towers. In those early days it had no staff, and its registered office was at The Building Centre, Store Street, London WC1. The Building Centre also acted as a postal address and forwarded any correspondence to whoever was acting as PASMA’s honorary secretary at the time. Any correspondence would be dealt with at the next meeting of the association. Meetings took place on an ad hoc basis usually in a room at the Excelsior Hotel at Heathrow Airport which would be booked by one of the members when they were stopping overnight.